


Between Water and Fire

by primeideal



Category: The Divine Cities Series - Robert Jackson Bennett
Genre: Canon-typical language, Character Death Fix, F/F, Post-City of Blades, Yuletide 2017, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 15:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13010460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/primeideal
Summary: Signe, and accents.





	Between Water and Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clocketpatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/gifts).



> Thanks to isis for betaing!

_One of the legacies of the dual occupations, so integral to our way of life that many never stop to give it a second thought, is the way that a common language has been entwined within Saypuri and Continental culture. While some pockets of Dreyling islanders retain their ancestral tongue, the language of trade is more prevalent among pirates and diplomats from the north, and many of the dialectical traits that once distinguished Saypuri and Continental speakers have become less pronounced. Although censored documents indicate the history of antiquated Continental forms of address, many displaying intensely personal expressions of devotion to favored Divinities, these have given way to more distant, formal speech, as befitting contact with individuals from a society one might be wary of.  
_ _-Efrem Pangyui, “The Dispersal of Early Voortyashtani Pilgrims”_

“Why do you smoke these, Officer?” asked Stisal. “They’re rancid.”

Her voice fluctuated when she asked, rose and fell with the lilt of highlander speech. Questions had a sound of their own, as if they were a strange thing to avoid.

There was not many questions among the tribes of the highlands. You grew your food, shod your horses, tended your sick as best you could, demanded vengeance at council meeting after meeting. These could be done without much question about it, though the newest beleaguered fort commander was a progressive type who attempted to open everything up for debate.

And for all her learning and power, Signe still had the echoes of the Jaszlo tribe deep in her lungs. She was not particularly proud of it, and perhaps that was why she ran the construction firm with a strong hand. She gave orders and received ideas in equal measure, but never doubted a deadline once it was set. Questions only slowed her colleagues down.

“They are,” she concurred, taking a draw of her cigarette. “Don’t start, they’re probably no good for you.”

“And you don’t worry about that?” Stisal asked, gaping. Another question, but one more polite than the alternatives. They all boiled down to the same thing; _Who do you think you are?_

Signe still didn’t have an answer for that one. Nothing new, anyway.

“I’m more worried about the absence of a trained healer in the village. Smolisk didn’t have any apprentices, we ought to get you set up with someone skilled.” Not that someone trying to bring about the end of the world would have been interested in training a successor, but by the seas, the woman knew her trade.

“Trained how?” Stisal glared at her. “Not at some Saypuri academy, I should hope. Do the Dreylings have healers these days, or is it all new-made politicians?”

 _Never say the highlanders are completely ignorant._ Signe suppressed a smile. “It’s not too cold for doctoring. You’re right, we may need an expert at our headquarters. Though I would hope, for expediency’s sake, that you would not need to come down there every time someone takes ill.” If the SDC was to be a permanent installation, they would accumulate all kinds of staff, specialists even she had not foreseen. Whether the highlanders were willing to brave the river tribes and the disordered remnants of Fort Thinadeshi was another story entirely.

“We get along fine,” Stisal said.

Signe didn’t know what other answer she was expecting. Perhaps among the Jaszlo she would find someone willing to admit that the highlanders could do with more infrastructure, or at least that the ways of the past were changing.

Then again, maybe not. They turned up their noses, literally and figuratively, at her cigarettes.

* * *

Signe checked the time, then stared into her basement mirror. It was an act most people would consider unlike her, but she did not do it for the reasons they might expect.

Carefully, she breathed on it, and traced a pattern in the fog. Turyin privately thought it unwise, but had conceded this point to Signe. After what she had been through, what more could stealing that marvel do?

Her father’s face emerged from the condensation. His features were sharp and distinct as always; he claimed it was something about how the cold air made his windows or whatever he was peering from fog up, but that he didn’t really understand it himself. “Signe!”

“Hello,” she smiled. “I’m glad to see you.” Not “glad to see you well.” Well was too much to assume for him, but whole was enough.

“I’ll try not to keep you long,” he said. “Not supposed to tell you where I am, but it’s rainy as shit.”

Signe tried not to dwell on that mental image. “Better than the snow. And I’m in no rush.” She scheduled things, of course. That hadn’t changed. But running up against the shortness of life had brought new priorities.

“Snow you can fight in. Rain just makes a damn mess.”

“I’ll defer to your knowledge,” she said. Once, her lineage as the daughter of the _dauvkind_ might have brought with it a host of associated Dreyling lore, the countless distinctions in undesirable weather included. Instead, she was left to gather the bits and pieces of her father’s legacy from afar. Were all Dreylings just as given to cursing? Her colleagues’ vocabulary suggested not, but perhaps they just controlled themselves around her.

“You’ll defer to anyone when the seas turn to sand.”

“Careful,” she warned, “that sounds like some miracle we need to stave off.”

“Well, shit. You turn around any rivers yet?”

“Not yet,” Signe admitted. “We...might actually fall behind our newest deadline.”

She hadn’t said as much aloud, though the commander seemed to have caught on and gave her assurance that it would be no matter. The river tribes, for their part, were focused on more mundane affairs, such as who overfished the prescribed quotas. In the secrecy of the mirror connection, if nowhere else, she could speak her fears.

“Not a surprise,” said Sigrud, “with you, er, gone for a spell, there’s bound to have been some disorganization. Things should pick up eventually, yes?”

Signe winced. “Nobody is irreplaceable here. I left detailed notes, things should have continued just fine.” She hadn’t exactly been over all the minutiae of production numbers during her absence. There’d been too much else to do. “If anything, they slowed down without the _dauvkind_ there to motivate them.”

She meant it as a joke, but Sigrud’s face fell. “I regret that every fucking day, you don’t know—”

“Father, please, I didn’t mean—”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he yelled, and for a moment the anger hung in the impossible distance between them.

Finally, she said, “It will be all right.” If she willed it so, in time, it would be. The SDC had succeeded at every hurdle before. Surely the matter of their deadlines could not interfere with her father’s heart, not when nothing else had.

Sigrud nodded. “Give Mulaghesh a good old punch from me.”

“Of course,” she said. “I love you.”

“And you,” said Sigrud, “beyond the seas.”

They were still unused to warmth, but the ritual served in its place. Perhaps one day, between her work and his fugitive journey, their voices would sound more natural. Until then, the miracle of the mirror served as a conduit for another.

* * *

By her own admission, Turyin drank less than she did before the battle, and less again than she did before arriving in Voortyashtan. Signe appreciated it, not only for the woman’s health and mood, but also because she stank of alcohol less.

When she was sober, she kissed better. Let the highlanders wonder what they would; Sigrud would go on smoking as long as she dared. But if Turyin objected to the stench, why, she would snuff the spark out in a heartbeat.

“Turyin,” she said one night, the sound of the waves reminding them both how far they had come, “you know if you said the word I would follow you across the globe. I have lived a lifetime and more, and am grateful for every spare day, while Voortyashtan is often—overwhelming—for those not well-versed in it.”

“I have one fucking arm, not zero eyes,” Turyin retorted. “If you don’t think I notice how much you love your company then I’m not sure you’re qualified to lead it.”

“I do love it,” Signe said, “and I trust you’ve picked up on many subtler things. But you have a right to go somewhere you care about, too.” Besides, there were new communication technologies even more accessible than hidden miracles. Telegraphs would span the globe, and once Voortyashtan got telephone wires laid down, perhaps she could work remotely. Not that she was in any haste to tell Turyin that.

“I sat on my behind for years. And I marched where the army commanded for years more,” Turyin said. “Now that I find someone I want to stand beside? I think I can learn to tolerate even Voortyashtan.”

“I would not make it an ordeal.”

“It’s not as terrible a shithole as I expected,” Turyin said. “You’re here. The new commander’s trying to make an effort. The science technicians who stuck around are actually interesting now that they don’t have a pet project to get obsessed with. Good wine is too expensive.”

“That’s a good thing?”

“Means I can’t get drunk all the time and have to put some effort into living. Saypur seemed preferable, but it wasn’t like I was doing much.”

Signe nodded. “I don’t want you to feel trapped for my sake.”

“Sometimes I think your father was right about you. You are so young, for all you have been through.”

“Not too young for you, I should hope.”

“Of course not. But I am old enough to pout and sacrifice when the need should arise, yes?”

“ _If_ ,” Signe corrected her.

“Yes, that. Listen, if Shara Komayd had told me she had some intricate plan for my happiness, but I needed to sail to fucking—to Voortyashtan in order to play my part, I’d have put up a fight, but I probably would have gone anyway. This way, I have you, and it’s our choice alone. Not some crackpot political scheme.”

Signe laughed, and kissed her again. “Then I’ll choose you again and again. Here or wherever we land.”

* * *

Registers clanged, cranes loomed, rivers churned in many directions, but to Signe, the sound of business was wordless. When digits were manipulated and multiplied, blueprints drawn to exacting scale, maps reproduced the world without boundaries, they had no accent.

She did not think that was what had drawn her to the world of engineering, but it increasingly seemed both a refuge from the discordant world outside and a harmonious meeting-place where the waters met. Or maybe that was just how it seemed to her. “We need more staff,” she pointed out, “and it’s not efficient to wait for a ship every time we want to hire someone.”

“Our ships are getting faster,” Kytel said, “and we can telegraph for skilled labor.”

“Which could just reinforce the idea that we’re a short-term venture, to vanish as soon as the harbor is complete. The faster we work—and we _have_ been making exceptional progress—the more people will assume that we’re nearly done.”

“So we build more buildings,” said Kytel, “great.”

“For housing? Storage? With the declassification of the detritus there’s much less to guard. We should be refurbishing that before we do anything else.”

“All the same,” he said, “I don’t know why it has to be a...” He cast about as if looking for an insult, but the Dreylings were not quite as hostile towards the Voortyashtanis as the Saypuri were, or else relied less on stale epithets. “Riverfolk.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” said Signe. “It could be a highlander. Or an ex-military. Do you really want any of them hanging around inside our territory?”

“Well...” Kytel trailed off.

“Or we could just reassign our own staff to medical and miscellaneous occupations.”

“I suppose they’d rather take their own initiative.”

“Precisely. Let the local tribes have some influence in the process, integrate them into our project, and they’ll be more supportive in the future. I don’t mean to single out the river tribes, they’re just more convenient for commuting.”

“We’ll want to meet whoever’s willing to try it,” said Kytel. “Make sure it’s not another provincial governor.”

“Of course,” said Signe. “I’m sure he’ll want to learn much from you too.”

It was several days before the Dreylings could be persuaded to meet with Amui. The wiry Ternopyn man attempted to demonstrate his prowess by hauling every tool he could find to headquarters, regardless of its utility in medical procedures. “I admit it,” he said, “I am not an expert in the science of medicine.” Signe hid her annoyance, but to her surprise, her co-workers only nodded seriously, as if admiring his forthrightness. “But neither, I gather, are many of you. I am willing to learn quickly, and stay out of the way when not needed. Hopefully, you and my people both will take care so that you should not need my services.” He gave a quick smile that came and went like the river current. “Besides, there is one thing more.”

“Yes?” Kytel asked, sounding curious.

“I ask for a fair wage, the same as any man. Of course I know your ships are mighty, and can summon great giants from far away. You are of course free to call on them, as is your right. But listen; let me work with you, and you need not pay the fare for the journeys back and forth. Is that not to both our benefits?”

Kytel chuckled. “You are a true man of business. Very well.”

Drekels, Signe found, had a way of making people see fair reason when their own faults might blind them. It was a start.

* * *

“I don’t understand your need to encrypt that,” Signe said, glancing down at Turyin’s notepad.

Turyin blinked. “That’s extraordinarily fucking rich coming from you.”

“I don’t understand your need to encrypt that _now_ ,” she amended, “when it’s been declassified, to telegraph halfway across the world, when there are more secure methods of communication available.”

“Shara thinks she’s being watched,” Turyin explained, “and given her penchant for do-gooding she may well be, at that. Considering the uses we put those mirrors to—and don’t apologize, they’re no good if they’re not being used for _something—_ it’s safer to continue with standard practices. Besides, if I keep her informed on various ‘discoveries’ she’ll think she’s got me well in hand and will maybe stop trying to get two steps ahead of my every move.”

“Which doesn’t explain why I’m involved.”

“You’re involved because if I started without you you’d try to decipher my transmissions anyway,” Turyin said, “and I feel safer knowing that there’s _some_ spycraft I’ve clued you in on.”

If her father’s summaries were any indication, Signe thought she’d enjoy the sort of spycraft Turyin proposed much more than the sort he engaged in, which seemed to involve wandering around dead ends and blind alleys looking for signs of unusual behavior. “I hope you can trust me.”

“Right, right.” Turyin flipped out another page and started writing.

_Dear Shara,_

_I hope you are well. I apologize for not following up about your proposals for Parliamentary reform, but research on alternative systems has been slow. At your convenience, please follow up with the records of Vallaicha Thinadeshi on suggestions for democratic representation to facilitate a wider range of citizen participation._

_Enclosed please find adjusted survey coordinates for adjacent terrain._

_-Gen. Turyin Mulaghesh (Fourth Class)_

“What does Fourth Class mean?” Signe asked.

“It means Shara is an interfering shit,” Turyin summarized, “so let’s give her something to work on.”

“And you’re just...specifying that there’s an enclosure? Isn’t that a bit forward?”

“Rudimentary misdirection. Anyone savvy enough to intercept the document is also probably savvy enough to know that it’s not map coordinates, but you never know.”

She reached for a list of the monuments once hidden behind SDC walls, slowly being released to Voortyashtani custody. With the miracle of the City of Blades destroyed, many were simply being ground back into stone. Others were being put on careful display in the Galleries. There was talk of shipping still more back to Bulikov, though Turyin had less-than-tactfully stated that she wanted no part in that conversation.

_A deer charging on two hind legs, birds nesting in its antlers_

_A scabbard with a snake coiling around it_

_Two figures standing back-to-back, wearing masks, small bundles in their arms_

_A boat with a hole in its sail_

_A small tower, perhaps a lighthouse, its top hollow_

_A kneeling figure clutching an open book_

_A lock and key_

_An anchor with a long chain_

_A whale with a wounded fin_

_A figure raising a spear to the sky in each hand_

_A face with mutilated lips_

_Two horses and a plough_

“Okay,” said Signe, “it does look a little less secretive written out like that.”

“It looks strange is what it looks like,” said Turyin.

“Let’s hope Shara can make some sense out of it.”

“If she wants to stew and panic over it for a few days,” Turyin said, “I think that’s the least she deserves for putting us through all of this.”

* * *

Signe wiped the mirror once again, bidding Sigrud farewell for another week. She wandered upstairs to find Turyin looking pensive. “Are you all right?”

“I feel like shit,” Turyin bluntly replied.

Signe looked around; Turyin didn’t appear to have been drinking. “Need to rest?”

“Just need to walk around.”

Signe walked towards the door, as if to come with her, but Turyin turned to stop her. “How can you look at me?”

“Well,” Signe said coolly, “there is a lamp in this room to give light, and I have spectacles that strengthen my eyes, so—”

“I killed your lover,” said Turyin flatly. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Turyin,” said Signe, “I would speak, but you must listen.”

Grief was never far from Turyin. Grief for generations of wars and warriors, for children lost in designs not their own making. Yet held by Signe’s gaze, she nodded, and followed Signe back to her room.

“You are the first to admit,” Signe said, “that you have killed many. Many of whom had great cause, who believed in peace, or even the righteousness of war. Never did you believe that that made you unlovable.”

“I was young. And if _their_ kindred had sought me out, I would have had no answer.”

“I just spoke to my father. He killed with a wilder mind, less regret in the moment, than you. Can he not be forgiven?”

“There is a difference...” Turyin’s words trailed off.

“If all went according to natural justice, I would not have known your love, not have been reunited with you at all. Is that fair?”

She had told Turyin only the cursory details at first: _I was dead. Now I’m not._ Later, they had come to know each other as more than allies of convenience, and Signe had shared something more.

 _Daughter of seas,_ a voice in an unspoken tongue had told her, _your restlessness is more than any world can bear. Launch again, young one, and in what living days remain, construct the world anew._

 _But why?_ something in her ashes had cried out. _I’m not Divine, I’m—no one special. The world can get along without me._

 _I_ _t can,_ the voice had assented. Maternal and childish, musical and chaotic, distant and near, it pulsed within her. _But my will is hope, and you_ _may bring hope to many in ways you do not yet see._

“I thought it was speaking of my father,” Signe had explained, then. “But maybe it meant you.”

“Nothing in this damn world is fair,” Turyin decided. “And not much outside it either.”

“But I am yours,” said Signe, “if you will still be mine.”

Turyin shook her head, but it was in exasperated annoyance, and when Signe kissed her quietly, she did not protest.

What she had not told Turyin was that she carried another memory. Human faces and inhuman ones, bringing together stones and vines, bricks and bridges, soil and flame, and building something new, something ever-growing. _My will is hope_ , the voice had echoed, _so long as that is the will of those who dream of something more. Even those who do not know me._

“The Divinities can wait,” said Signe, taking Turyin’s prosthetic arm in hers. For the day, it was enough to be embraced by a hand of her own creation.


End file.
